The Personal Handyphone System (PHS) is a lightweight mobile communication system that makes use of the existing public telephone network by building upon the existing land line network. Because base stations in a PHS network have much smaller coverage radius than that of a typical cellular network and because PHS mobile units employ low-power transmitters, PHS is best suited for densely populated areas. PHS was originally deployed in Japan in the early 1990s and was intended to provide a low cost alternative to a cellular network. However, PHS was not a commercial success, as many subscribers were frustrated by the limited mobility, poor signal quality and limited ability to operate in moving vehicles.
In spite of the tepid public response in Japan, PHS has recently been deployed in other densely populated areas in Asia, in an attempt to provide a low-cost alternative to traditional wireless and landline communication networks.
However, given the lack of commercial success of PHS in Japan, hardware manufacturers have been reticent to invest large sums of money in the design and further development of PHS hardware (e.g., base station and mobile unit chipsets). Thus, it would be desirable to have wireless devices capable of operating in a PHS wireless system without the time and expense of the design and development of such devices.